Inkjet-printed vertically emitting solid-state organic lasers

In this paper, we show that Inkjet Printing can be successfully applied to external-cavity vertically-emitting thin-film organic lasers, and can be used to generate a diffraction-limited output beam with an output energy as high as 33.6 uJ with a slope efficiency S of 34%. Laser emission shows to be continuously tunable from 570 to 670 nm using an intracavity polymer-based Fabry-Perot etalon. High-optical quality films with several um thicknesses are realized thanks to ink-jet printing. We introduce a new optical material where EMD6415 commercial ink constitutes the optical host matrix and exhibits a refractive index of 1.5 and an absorption coefficient of 0.66 cm-1 at 550-680 nm. Standard laser dyes like Pyromethene 597 and Rhodamine 640 are incorporated in solution to the EMD6415 ink. Such large size " printed pixels " of 50 mm 2 present uniform and flat surfaces, with roughness measured as low as 1.5 nm in different locations of a 50um x 50um AFM scan. Finally, as the gain capsules fabricated by Inkjet printing are simple and do not incorporate any tuning or cavity element, they are simple to make, have a negligible fabrication cost and can be used as fully disposable items. This works opens the way towards the fabrication of really low-cost tunable visible lasers with an affordable technology that has the potential to be widely disseminated

Deep trenches for thermal crosstalk reduction in InP-based photonic integrated circuits

We numerically and experimentally investigate an on-chip solution to reduce the thermal crosstalk in indium phosphide-based photonic integrated circuits. We introduce deep trenches, fabricated through wet etch, between active and passive components. The current injected in active components and the geometry of the trenches are the parameters considered in our analysis. The trenches thermally isolate the passive components from the heat generated by active components. The thermal crosstalk is quantified by measuring the effects on the electro-optical response of an MZ modulator considered as a test structure. The heat sources are represented by semiconductor optical amplifiers placed at different distances with respect to the position of the MZ. Our experiments show how both the geometry and the position of the trenches, play a role in the reduction of the thermal crosstalk

Fabrication and characterization of etched facets in InP for advanced packaging of Photonic Integrated circuits

In this work we describe the fabrication and characterization of straight and angled etched facets compatible with the standard COBRA active-passive process. The implementation of these structures enables advanced packaging of photonic integrated circuits with multiple optical inputs and outputs

Fabrication and characterization of etched facets in InP for advanced packaging of Photonic Integrated circuits

In this work we describe the fabrication and characterization of straight and angled etched facets compatible with the standard COBRA active-passive process. The implementation of these structures enables advanced packaging of photonic integrated circuits with multiple optical inputs and outputs

Fabrication and characterization of a wet-etched InP-based vertical coupling mirror

In this work we describe the fabrication and characterization of couplers realized with a wet etching process that is compatible with the standard COBRA active-passive process. The implementation of this broadband structure allows for wafer-scale waveguide-loss and absolute-wavelength measurements

Fabrication and characterization of a wet-etched InP-based vertical coupling mirror

In this work we describe the fabrication and characterization of couplers realized with a wet etching process that is compatible with the standard COBRA active-passive process. The implementation of this broadband structure allows for wafer-scale waveguide-loss and absolute-wavelength measurements

Gain properties of dye-doped polymer thin films

Hybrid pumping appears as a promising compromise in order to reach the much coveted goal of an electrically pumped organic laser. In such configuration the organic material is optically pumped by an electrically pumped inorganic device on chip. This engineering solution requires therefore an optimization of the organic gain medium under optical pumping. Here, we report a detailed study of the gain features of dye-doped polymer thin films. In particular we introduce the gain efficiency $K$, in order to facilitate comparison between different materials and experimental conditions. The gain efficiency was measured with various setups (pump-probe amplification, variable stripe length method, laser thresholds) in order to study several factors which modify the actual gain of a layer, namely the confinement factor, the pump polarization, the molecular anisotropy, and the re-absorption. For instance, for a 600 nm thick 5 wt\% DCM doped PMMA layer, the different experimental approaches give a consistent value $K\simeq$ 80 cm.MW$^{-1}$. On the contrary, the usual model predicting the gain from the characteristics of the material leads to an overestimation by two orders of magnitude, which raises a serious problem in the design of actual devices. In this context, we demonstrate the feasibility to infer the gain efficiency from the laser threshold of well-calibrated devices. Besides, temporal measurements at the picosecond scale were carried out to support the analysis.Comment: 15 pages, 17 figure

Widely tunable laser source operating at 2μm realized as monolithic InP photonic integrated circuit

A tunable laser operating from 2011 – 2042 nm realized as a monolithic InP photonic integrated circuit and fabricated within a multi project wafer run is presented. The laser is tuned using an intracavity filter based on nested asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometers with electrorefractive modulators. The device is intended for a single line gas spectroscopy and was designed and realized using a generic integration technology